As a way to start out slowly on this blogging venture, I’ve decided to direct readers to a couple of exceptionally good bloggers–people I know personally and hold in high regard. Each of them offers deeply significant and often seriously humorous (or, humorously serious) reflections on a wide range of contemporary realities. I hope you’ll enjoy them. I hope they will challenge and inspire you. They certainly have that effect on me!

One of the bloggers is my very good friend, Marian Ronan, PhD, who was professor of theology at ABSW from 1997 to 2008 and later served as visiting professor at New York Theological Seminary. The other blogger I want to introduce is David R. Henson who earned his M.A. in theology at ABSW\GTU, and is an ordained Episcopal priest. I had the great pleasure of studying with David in a course I offered on earliest Christianity’s various understandings of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. I’m certain I learned more from him than he did from me, though he graciously insisted that the resources used in the course were compelling in ways that enabled him, as he said, “to pursue some ‘really new’ lines of thought” on the subject. Both Marian and David are extraordinarily insightful observers of local, national, and global issues. They are also conversant about, and engaged with, the variety of ways communities of faith are responding to these issues.

Marian’s blog is entitled “Marian Ronan: An American Catholic on the Margins,” and you can read her blog posts at this web address. She’s a brilliant, critical, and deeply insightful Christian theologian.

Finally, a word of warning: One of David’s great gifts is SATIRE. In a recent post, “World Leaders Close Borders in Fear of Renewed Terrorist Attacks” he reflects on the violence perpetrated not by Syrians or people of color in the U.S., but by white Americans. As one who belongs to that particular group, I was at first shocked, and then quite humbled, when I read David’s compelling piece.